Sweden boss Graham Potter was delighted as his side opened their World Cup campaign with a 5-1 thrashing of Tunisia at the Estadio Monterrey on Sunday night.
They appeared a world away from their dismal qualifying performances with an assured win over error-strewn Tunisia, with Brighton midfielder Yasin Ayari bookending the scoring, Mattias Svanberg finding the net and the star pairing of Alexander Isak and Viktor Gyokeres also on the scoresheet.
Potter was jubilant afterwards but also appeared to have picked up an injury over the course of the match, as he was pictured bleeding from his right ear.
“I don’t know what happened. Someone scratched me, or bit me. I’ll have to analyse the video footage,” he joked, via Swedish publication Sportbladet.
Sweden still have to face Japan and the Netherlands in a difficult Group F, with the two sides playing out a 2-2 draw on Sunday.
But the performance in Monterrey resurrected Swedish hopes after a dire qualifying campaign in which they failed to win a game in their group, with Potter brought in late to turn their fortunes around.
They eventually qualified via a Nations League play-off, beating Ukraine and Poland to make this summer’s finals across the US, Canada and Mexico.
Potter said: “I’m really pleased with the players. We know the quality of the individuals in the front positions but they needed a team to function.
“We weren’t perfect, we knew we wouldn’t be. But at the start of the game I thought we had good control.
“We just focus on what we can do, we focus on our performances. It doesn’t matter what people think from the outside or opinions.
“That’s the beauty of the World Cup, everyone has predictions and forecasts but we have to focus on our job and how we play as a team.
“We will meet another top team at the weekend [the Netherlands, who they play on 20 June] who are one of the favourites for the competition.”
